


Circle of Life

by DameRuth



Series: Jed and Friends [8]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Multi, Pete's World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <a href="http://www.whofic.com/series.php?seriesid=2162">Jed!Verse</a> trio faces a momentous decision that threatens to drive them apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sahiya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/gifts).



> This is my [Help Haiti](http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/) auction fic for Sahiya, who has been very kind about my recent snail's pace writing speed. She gave me the following prompt:_ "I would like to see Jed, the Doctor, and Rose deal with a difficult time in their relationship. I'd prefer the problem to be internal (i.e. within the relationship the three of them have) rather than external. It might, in fact, be a problem that two of them are having, but of course the third one is affected. For instance, perhaps the Doctor and Rose are on the rocks for whatever reason, and this causes Jed to freak out."_ Her wish is my command (and, rather helpfully, fits a fic I'd already been planning for this 'Verse). ;) Takes up immediately after the ending of ["Teamwork."](http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=33103) Thanks to Aibhinn for beta-ing! (I made some changes afterwards, so any errors I introduced then are mine alone.)
> 
> I realize I'm putting the cart a bit before the horse, posting a mid-series AU fic to this archive before getting 'round to archiving any of the previous stories, but because this was written for the "Help Haiti" auction and there's a special collection just for that auction here on the AO3, I thought it would be appropriate all the same.

**Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone**

 

The Doctor's head went up expectantly, giving Jed a few seconds' warning before the throb of a courier zeppelin's engines became audible to human ears.

"That'll be them," Jed said, breaking their meditative silence. They'd been sitting at a corner table in the pub, nursing their drinks and lost in their own thoughts.

"Yep," the Doctor said, popping the "p" as he so often did. "Time to face the music." He downed the last of his pint in one gulp before rising from his chair, wincing at the reaction of his probably-cracked ribs, and Jed followed suit.

Kilellan was small enough, the old town square had been opened out on one side and expanded to serve as a docking point for the mail blimps that serviced more isolated communities. As Jed and the Doctor exited the pub, the Torchwood zeppelin was already settling into place, ignoring the stubby mooring tower; couriers might need to land anywhere, and were designed for that eventuality.

The pub was emptying out as the rest of its patrons--a mix of locals and the hikers and cyclists who sought out the scenic locale on holiday--gaped and murmured at the unexpected sight. In the evening gloom, the zeppelin's bright running lights picked out the sleek outline of its hull, and spotlights illuminated the neatly-trimmed grass.

Crew members leapt the short distance to the ground and set about securing the ship with cables. Even before the task was finished, though, a small, slender figure exited the craft, making only cursory use of the short length of dangling rope ladder. Blonde hair flashed pale in the glare of the spotlights as Rose tossed her head in a familiar I-mean-business gesture before she scanned the small crowd, caught sight of Jed and the Doctor, and began to stride in their direction.

She made a daunting sight, still in her trim, professional Vitex suit from the board meeting she'd attended that morning (though it felt like a million years ago now), moving with purpose and a hint of tightly controlled anger. Jed could hear the Doctor swallow, and while they held their ground shoulder-to-shoulder, they didn't move to meet Rose's advance.

She stopped an arm's length away, her eyes all but shooting sparks as she glared back and forth between her two men, and said in a tight, controlled voice, "You could have called me."

"Um. Well, we were borrowing the phone, y'see, since the EMP took out all our communications devices, so we didn't want to run up a bill and we knew you'd be at Torchwood and get the message," the Doctor began, just a hairsbreadth away from babbling.

"We work for Torchwood and my dad owns Vitex. We can _afford_ to pay someone back for a phone call," Rose told him, her voice still tight, but with cracks running through it. She shifted her weight towards the Doctor, and Jed, moving mostly on instinct, held out a warning hand.

"He's hurt," he warned. "He took a bad hit to the ribs." Rose looked in Jed's direction, still glaring, but the cracks were propagating there, too, her angry expression hovering on the edge of collapse. Jed hurried on, adding, "He's okay, though, we both are."

The reassurance was the last straw, and Rose's face crumpled. A second later, all three of them were wrapped in a three-way embrace (very lightly, in the case of the Doctor), with Rose's face buried against Jed's shoulder.

"When your zeppelin vanished, I thought . . ." she started, but her voice failed her. Jed kissed the top of her head and hugged her as close as he could one-armed.

"S'okay, sweetheart," he told her. "You know us, we always come back." But, deep down, he knew how close this one had been. _Luck, sheer blind luck . . ._ He suppressed a shudder.

"I can't keep doing this," she said when she found her voice again. She sniffed and rubbed her damp cheeks on Jed's shirt. "I just can't. Especially if –" she broke off with another smothered sob.

"If?" the Doctor prompted gently.

"If we're ever going to start a family," Rose finished. "I'm not raising children alone." Jed felt the Doctor tense, ever so slightly, and his stomach dropped. Nothing like bringing up the increasingly more insistent elephant in the metaphorical room to send things from bad to worse.

"Sh," the Doctor said, his voice low and warm, betraying none of his body's tension. "Of course we will, one of these days."

Rose sniffed again and looked up at him, a hint of her earlier glare returning. "And when's that gonna be? Have you even run those tests yet? We're none of us getting any younger, and neither of you two are immortal."

"I know," the Doctor said, "but we're okay now, yeah?" He smiled, the smile that could melt stone and hearts alike. Rose wavered in the face of his blatant deflection, but for once didn't let it go.

"When?" she asked. This time there was a pleading tone to the question that made Jed's heart clench, but there was nothing he could do or say: this was between them.

"It's late," the Doctor said, calm and kindly and rational, the way he always was when this discussion came up. "We're all knackered and standing in the middle of nowhere. Well, Scotland, which isn't exactly _nowhere,_ but . . . anyway, we can talk about it tomorrow. For now, let's just go home. Okay?"

"Promise?" Rose asked, "tomorrow?" It sounded almost like capitulation, on the surface – but not quite.

"Yeah," the Doctor said, sounding perfectly sincere, and Jed felt a twinge of foreboding. _Doc, I don't know that she's gonna let it go this time,_ he thought, but held his peace, hoping he was wrong about what he was reading.

Rose smiled and shifted, tugging the Doctor down for a kiss, followed by a kiss for Jed. The touch of her lips sent a jolt of reaction through Jed, the last of the day's fight-of-flight adrenaline shunting into an entirely different instinctive pathway, burning away any superficial worries.

When they pulled apart, the Doctor was still smiling, but now with a flirtatious edge to it. "Does this mean we're forgiven?" he asked Rose.

"Yes," Rose said, falling into the familiar game. "Provisionally. Depending on how well you make it up to me later."

"That's good because, um . . ." the Doctor's smile went sheepish. "Well, Jed and I decided to have a couple pints while we were waiting for you, and it turns out the magnetic strips on all my credit cards got wiped, too. I sort of promised we'd take care of it when you got here."

Rose's head dropped for a moment, then bounced back up. Fortunately, she was laughing. "Why do I always seem to end up paying?"

"Vitex heiress?" the Doctor suggested with raised eyebrows. Rose laughed again.

"All right, let's go settle up. Then home. You owe me twice now," she said.

"Good thing there's two of us, then," the Doctor said, cocking an eyebrow in Jed's direction as he moved, gingerly, to disentangle himself from the others.

"Teamwork," Jed said, taking his cue. "It's what we do best."

"Don't I know it," murmured Rose, and from there on it was the same as always after an adventure, laughter and flirtation skating over the surface of deeper anticipation, the three of them together and everything made right again. Deep down, though, Jed's unease remained. He ignored it. This was now, the past was over and done with, and tomorrow was a full night away.

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which The Plot Thickens and the Doctor Is Angsty. Aibhinn continues to beta, though I made changes just before posting; any resulting errors are mine, all mine.

Torchwood policy was to give its field operatives "recovery" time off after a stressful mission, so with no pressure to be in at work the next day, it was nearly noon by the time the trio finally trooped down to the kitchen in search of sustenance.

The mansion was quiet, the rest of the family dispersed in various directions. The kitchen staff wouldn't be back until it was time to prep the evening meal, as was standard on a weekday. Not that Jed or either of the others minded fending for themselves. If anything, working together in the empty kitchen enhanced the lingering sense of a peaceful, healing bubble containing just the three of them.

They didn't speak much, not even the Doctor, communicating instead with touch and gesture, moving in smooth, easy intimacy. It was as close to perfect as any moment ever got, and, as a result, couldn't last.

"So," Rose said as they dallied around the breakfast table, sipping second cups of tea and nibbling away the last of the toast and eggs, "How did the tests come out?" She didn't look at the Doctor as she spoke and her tone was casual, but she was frowning with great intensity at the triangle of toast she was buttering and there was a determined set to her jaw.

Jed froze, an abrupt sense of dread crawling over his skin.

The Doctor paused, too, in the process of blowing on his tea to cool it. His eyes flickered up to look at Rose over the rim of his teacup, but otherwise he didn't move. His face had undergone one of its heartbeat-fast changes, all expression draining away.

When he didn't answer, Rose carefully set down her toast and knife, interlacing her fingers. The knuckles went white with tension, but when she finally looked up at the Doctor her face was nearly as expressionless as his. "Well?"

Moving with the same deliberate care Rose had, the Doctor set his cup onto its saucer. "What tests would those be?"

The tension was a physical weight in the air; either that, or Jed's lungs were being squeezed so tightly by his taut muscles it only felt like he was trying to breathe stone.

"The genetic compatibility tests," Rose said, dead level, not giving a millimeter.

The Doctor gave the tiniest shrug of one shoulder. His eyes were pitch-black, his features so still he seemed like a stranger. "I haven't run them yet. Still plenty of time."

"No," Rose said, very quietly, "There isn't."

_This is what it feels like in nightmares,_ Jed thought, _when you can't move, can't scream, can't do anything . . ._

"I don't want to talk about this now," the Doctor said, folding aside his newspaper and loading cutlery onto his empty plate, preparing to leave the table.

"You said we'd talk about it today," Rose reminded him. Then, her icy calm slipping, "_Why_ won't you talk about it, except 'someday'?" It wasn't anger beneath her façade, it was desperation.

The Doctor stood in silence, no longer looking at her, hardly even seeming to be aware of the others anymore. Total shutdown.

"One life, you said," Rose told him, pleading. "One whole human life, with me. Didn't you mean it?"

That got the Doctor to look at her, and his still mask faltered for just a second, revealing inarticulate anguish beneath. Then he turned and was gone from the room in four long strides.

Rose pressed her hand tightly to her mouth, and for the first time looked to Jed, her eyes welling up with tears.

The nightmare paralysis snapped and Jed could breathe and move again. He reached across the table for Rose's free hand. She gripped it hard, as if he could pull her back from some cliff's edge.

"I'll talk to him," he said, holding her eyes with his, projecting all the reassurance he could.

Rose, hand still covering her mouth and tears spilling down her cheeks, nodded. Spinal reflex kicked in: action, motion, a mission. Jed stood, gave Rose's hand an extra squeeze, and planted a glancing kiss on her cheek before following the Doctor from the room.

\--

Jed didn't even have to think about where to find the Doctor. At a time like this, there was only one place he would possibly go.

The _Mark II_ was in her usual spot in the back garden, pretending to be a potting shed. That was her favorite disguise, though lately she'd started turning into a large lilac shrub for a few weeks every spring. _Purple is her favorite color,_ the Doctor had once explained with a shrug and a smile.

The Doctor wasn't smiling now, though. Jed found him perched precariously in the control room, his backside just barely balanced on the edge of the control panel and his feet propped on the safety railing. His elbows rested on his knees, hands hanging loose between, and his head was bowed. His whole posture was one of hunched pain. He hadn't had time to change clothes and was still in the tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt he'd worn to the kitchen, though he'd added a pair of ratty trainers from the stock of old shoes stashed by the back door for use during grubby jobs like gardening and timeship repair.

Jed closed the _Mark II_'s door behind him; the click roused the Doctor enough for a sidelong glance in Jed's direction, but he gave no greeting. _Still silent, not good,_ Jed thought as he walked across the control room and took up a position with his back leaning against the railing, just to one side of the Doctor's feet, facing the half-Time Lord. Crossing his arms across his chest, Jed asked, "Want to talk about it?"

That earned him a raised eyebrow. "I was expecting a more creative opening," the Doctor said. The words were light-hearted, but his voice was dull and tired.

Jed shook his head. "I'm all out of creative right now. Seriously, what's up? This has been brewing a long time, but I'll be damned if I know what's going on."

The Doctor looked away from him, focusing back on his own hands, brooding.

"I think Rose might be right," Jed offered. "At least about slowing down." Little as he liked to admit it, more and more Jed had been feeling the years creeping up on him. He was still fit and fast and sharp – but not as much so as he had been, and there were good reasons why fieldwork was considered a young person's occupation. A hundredth of a second could make a difference in a critical situation, and it took the selective blindness of youth to charge recklessly ahead and ignore the resulting close calls as a matter of course. Case in point, with yesterday's misadventure still a fresh, unsettling memory.

"Besides," he continued, "would having kids really be so bad? You get along great with Tony; I always figured you guys'd be natural parents." Anything else he'd been planning to say dried up as the Doctor fixed him with a double-barreled, dead-eyed stare.

"I've been a parent," the Doctor said, putting a world of bleak, gnawing pain into the simple words. "I've been a father and a grandfather. Even the part of me that comes from Donna was a mother, for a little while. I've been there and done that, got the t-shirt, over and over again . . . and lost everyone. No exceptions." He paused for emphasis. "I can't do it all again. I just can't." The quiet desolation in his voice was more terrible than any raging anger or howling grief could have been.

Jed swallowed, hard. There were times when the stories of the Doctor's past life – lives – in the other Universe seemed like just that: fairy tales, divorced from the everyday reality of the person he worked, lived and loved with. But there were other times, like this, when the centuries of age and experience, love and loss, and just downright _alienness_ bubbled up to the surface and turned a thin, brown-eyed man into something old, strange and more than a little scary. It wasn't something Jed felt qualified to deal with. The everyday Doctor he could relate to, but this ancient Power turned mortal was _way_ out of his league.

"I think you need to talk to Rose," Jed said. "I mean, really talk to her. She's hurting and confused right now. You have to explain this to her."

"She knows," the Doctor said, still with that quiet voice and dead eyes, "but she doesn't understand."

"You can make her understand," Jed said, feeling desperate, knowing he was talking in clichés but unable to think of anything better. "Please, you guys can get through this, I know you can, but I can't play go-between the whole time. You have to work together."

The Doctor tilted his head sideways, frowning, giving Jed the look that always made him feel transparent as glass, as if the Doctor could see straight through his mind and soul.

"What about you?" the Doctor asked. "You're part of this. How do you feel about having children?"

"Like I said, I think you guys would be great parents."

The Doctor's frown deepened. "I'm not talking about me and Rose, now. How do you, Jed Holbrook, feel about having children? _Your_ children. Because it wouldn't be just Rose and me. If we're doing it, we're all doing it."

The Doctor couldn't have stunned Jed more with a physical blow. _This is what it feels like to have your head explode,_ a tiny, sane bit of his mind observed, but the rest of him was racing through the completely new thought-pathways the Doctor's words opened up.

Always, when this topic had come up, Jed had held one, particular picture in his mind: Rose and the Doctor, married and having children, himself playing Uncle Jed, same as he was Big Brother Jed for Tony, the familiar patterns of life in the Tyler mansion expanding a bit but staying relatively stable.

What the Doctor was talking about, though . . . that was _change_, on a profound, unimagined level. _I could have a child. Children. A son, a daughter; not just "ours" but **mine**._ His brain fumbled for a moment, then spun out images of a dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl, a mix of his own features and Rose's, smiling his smile and laughing Rose's laugh. A little boy, long-limbed and energetic, who looked like, like . . .

Like Gray. Jed's mind flinched away in horror, but not before he remembered the feeling of Gray's fingers slipping from his hand, remembered lifting the tarp from the dead faces of his family and telling the soldier, _Yes, that's them,_ in a tone of unnatural calm, the place where his heart used to be as empty as the expression on the Doctor's face. _Oh, God, I know how he feels, only he's lost more than just one family, over and over._

Shaking and sick, completely off-balance, he met the Doctor's eyes. "I never thought of that."

The Doctor was watching Jed with grim compassion, resting his chin on his propped fist. "I know," he said.

_I can't deal with this, I don't know how, I . . ._ "Rose," Jed said, with immediate, utter certainty. They needed her, now. When they were together, the three of them, everything worked. "We need Rose. She's all alone. We have to go to her."

The Doctor didn't move, didn't so much as blink, for a long minute. Then his shifted his weight and dropped his feet from the railing to the deck, the movement stiff and clumsy thanks to his injured ribs. With raised eyebrows, he motioned Jed towards the door, a _Go on, lead the way,_ gesture.

Aching with relief, Jed complied. When he opened the door, his heart jolted when he saw Rose and Jackie standing just outside the mansion, watching the _Mark II_. Jackie had her arm wrapped protectively around Rose's shoulders: once a mother, always a mother. She was still dressed in her "work" clothes, one of the elegant outfits she wore for her charity work. She'd had a do earlier in the day and must have come home and found Rose in the kitchen.

Rose, in contrast, was still wearing her pajamas and dressing gown. She and Jackie both looked more apprehensive and unhappy than angry, which would have brought home the full seriousness of the situation more than anything, if Jed hadn't already understood. They were waiting, he realized, for him and the Doctor.

He stepped out across the timeship's threshold, trying (and, he was fairly certain, failing) to put on a reassuring face. Rose started to give him a pained-but-hopeful smile, but stopped before the expression was fully formed. Jed heard the door click shut behind him just as Rose's face changed, followed by a grating, rushing noise he'd never heard from the outside.

A blast of displaced air shoved him forward, physical as a giant hand at the small of his back, and Jed stumbled, barely catching his balance in time to turn and see the _Mark II_ dematerialize, leaving nothing more behind than a patch of bare earth in the middle of the lawn.

_tbc_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing thanks to Aibhinn for beta-ing, Britpicking, and extraneous comma extraction!

Jed stared at the space where the _Mark II_ had been. Before he could react, or really register what he'd just seen, Rose bumped into him, her smooth-soled slippers skidding on the grass as she came to a halt.

She was breathing harder than her short sprint merited. "Oh, you –" she hissed, then shouted at the empty air, _"Will you stop doing this to me?"_

Her frustrated cry echoed across the back lawn, unanswered. When Jed tentatively took her arm she turned and clung to him, bursting into tears. He buried his face in her hair and wondered what to do next.

\--

"Well, at least the day can't get any worse," Jed said later, closing his eyes and wishing he could sleep. Or, even better, wake up. They were huddled together on the sofa, the living room eerily quiet after Jackie shooed everyone else out, on pain of slappage, so they could have some time alone.

"Don't say that," Rose said, sounding as tired as Jed felt. She nestled more tightly under his arm. "You work for Torchwood, you know it can always get worse."

"Yeah. But I wouldn't turn down a nice alien invasion right now." _Anything for a distraction._

Rose groaned in agreement. Then: "I can't believe I bollocksed things up like that." Her words were loaded with self-recrimination.

"Hey," Jed admonished, giving her a squeeze. "_You_ didn't go running off into the wild blue yonder. He did." He let his head fall backwards and rest at an uncomfortable angle. "Besides it's not like _I_ did a great job talking him out of it."

"There wasn't anything you could have done. I should have known better. Getting up in his face like that's the worst thing I could do; he'll _always_ run from that." Rose sighed. "I was just so bloody _tired._ It's always the same. I'll try to talk to him and he'll smile and nod and be agreeable, and then he'll do his best to distract me. 'Here, Rose, have some tea. Have some sleep. Have some sex. You'll feel better and we'll talk about it later.'" Her mocking imitation of the Doctor's voice was bitterly precise. "But we never would. I went along with him, every time, because it was easier than pushing. But yesterday, when you two vanished, all I could think about was everything we hadn't done together. Then when you turned up all right, I knew I couldn't let it go again, not when I had another chance. I just couldn't."

Jed didn't miss the unwitting parallel between Rose's _I couldn't_ and the Doctor's _I can't_ \-- the pained cry of two people pushed to their respective limits. Two people who _should_ be talking face-to-face. _But all they've got is me, I guess. Scary thought._

Jed exhaled slowly through his nose. "I did get him to talk some, before he left," he said, and repeated most of what the Doctor had said.

When he finished, Rose growled in the back of her throat and shifted into a more comfortable position against Jed. "Yeah, he's right. I don't understand all the things he's lost, but I haven't been living wrapped in cotton wool all this time, either. My dad – my other dad – died in my arms. Crossing the Universes, I saw . . . a lot of things. Losing people _hurts_, but I don't think it's right to just give up. Seems to me, if you do that, you stop living. And I'd think the Doctor, of all people, would know that."

"He also said something else," Jed said, gathering his courage. If there was a take-home lesson from the day's events, it would probably be that keeping important things unspoken was a Bad Idea. "He asked me if _I_ wanted children."

He felt Rose tense. "Do you?" she asked. He couldn't see her face, but she sounded wary.

"I hadn't thought about it." _Honesty, dammit!_ "But now . . . I think I might." He was sure she could feel his heart speeding up as he waited for an answer. The day could get worse after all, if he managed to put both his partners off their relationship.

Rose pushed away, but only so she could gain enough distance to look at him. "Jed, I never knew." She looked even more stricken than before. "Whenever I brought it up and you were around, you'd just pull into yourself and stop talking. I thought that meant you weren't interested. I was having enough trouble with the Doctor, I wasn't gonna start with you, too. Why didn't you say anything?"

Jed shrugged, feeling uncomfortably dim-witted in hindsight. "Like I said, I hadn't thought about it. And besides, it didn't seem like it was my place to get involved."

"Your _place_?" Rose frowned at him, demanding an explanation.

_I sure hope confession is good for the soul, because it's embarrassing as hell._ "You were the couple," he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "If anyone was having kids, it'd be you. I was just sort of tagging along."

Rose briefly looked like she wanted to slap and hug him at the same time. She settled for slipping her hand into his, and her face softened. "Are you _still_ thinking like that? Haven't we been clear enough that's not how we feel about you?"

"I know, I know," Jed said, closing his eyes again, briefly. When he opened them again, he found himself looking at two cups of cold tea on the coffee table. "I know." _I know I'm an idiot._

Immediately after the Doctor left, they'd given Jackie a brief synopsis of what had happened. By the end of it, she'd looked like she had a _lot_ of things she wanted to say, but she kept it to herself and just hugged them both before settling them in the living room and going off to make tea. Making tea, Jed had learned, was the Thing To Do in this culture when comfort was needed. She'd brought two cups of it. Two. One for him and one for Rose, no distinctions made between them. Even Jackie understood more clearly than he had. _I really have been blind._

"It's hard to explain," he said. "I wouldn't have even understood it myself, yesterday. But since we're playing Psychology Endgame Analysis here . . . When I was talking to the Doctor, I remembered my family and what it felt like to lose them. I'd almost managed to forget how much it hurt. I think, all this time, my brain's been pulling some half-baked protective mechanism, keeping me from seeing what's in front of me." He made himself look at Rose. "Because you can't be afraid of losing your family again if you don't really have one." He managed a sickly smile at his own expense.

Rose looked stunned, then enlightened, and then she was back in his arms, hugging him hard. "It's stopped working, though," he added, whispering since his face was right next to her ear, "Because now I'm scared."

"Me, too," Rose admitted, also whispering. Then she managed a half-laugh, half-sob. "God, aren't we a mess?"

Jed joined in with a shaky chuckle. "I think we deserve each other," he said. "What's that old saying, about how getting things this screwed up takes a committee?"

Rose laughed again, and while it still sounded strangled, it was more genuine.

"Do they do couples therapy for three people?" she asked, trying to joke.

"Triples therapy?" Jed mused. "I have no idea. This is your planet, remember."

"Guess we can always look in the directory," Rose said.

"If we find anything, we're dragging the Doctor to it, first thing," Jed said.

Rose actually giggled into his chest. "Nah, first thing is keeping Mum from killing him."

"There is that," Jed said. "We'll have to be quick, when he gets back." They both fell silent, then, all levity dissolving as their thoughts went to the same, worried place.

"When do you think he'll be back?" Jed asked. He didn't dare voice the _if_ that was his greatest fear.

_He has to come back,_ he reassured himself. All this time together, all the small, subtle ties woven by shared lives and experience . . . those couldn't be severed by one blow-up, could they?

"I don't know," Rose said, slow and unhappy. Then, as if a thought had just occurred to her, she added, "Or do I?" She wriggled in Jed's arms, twisting to try and look over her shoulder at the clock on the mantel. She couldn't quite manage it. "What time is it?" she asked, with new urgency.

"Quarter after two," Jed said, picking up on her new energy even if he didn't understand it. "Why, is that important?"

"Five and a half hours," Rose said, with the certainty of someone very much hoping she was right. "He said he'd always be back after five and a half hours."

Jed did a fast mental calculation. "Sometime around six-thirty, then," he said. _Another four hours, I don't know if I can take it . . ._ All the same, his heart lifted. If Rose could believe, so could he.

"Good," Rose said. "That'll give us time to figure out how to save him from Mum."

Jed laughed and hugged her close. "I think we might need to call in backup for that. Lucky Pete'll be home by then."

"And Tony. I don't think she'll want to commit homicide in front of him. It'd set a bad example."

"Thank God for family," Jed said, and meant it.

_tbc_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing thanks to Aibhinn for beta-ing, though this time I made substantial changes before posting (i.e., errors are all mine).
> 
> The "nothing comes of nothing" quote that runs through the Doctor's mind comes from "Never Is A Long, Long Time" in Rick Wakeman's Return To The Centre of the Earth_ album. Lyrics are [here](http://www.lyricstime.com/rick-wakeman-never-is-a-long-long-time-lyrics.html); song can be listened to [here.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81c1Z3NzxoE) Perhaps not a perfect match for what's going on here, but still my internal theme song for writing this chapter._

The Doctor sat in the _Mark II_'s open doorway, staring out into space. He had his arms wrapped around one knee, hugging his bent leg close to his body while his other leg dangled carelessly out into the void, protected by the young timeship's skinfield. Even with that barrier, the cold was intense enough to raise gooseflesh on the Doctor's half-human skin, but he didn't feel it. He was too deeply lost in contemplation of what lay before him: _nothing._

To the casual observer, one who wouldn't know any better, the gap of nothingness here wouldn't be particularly noteworthy. It was a slight lacuna in the spacing of stars and planets in this part of the Universe, but not beyond the norms of random variation. To the Doctor, who did know better, it was the gap in the constellation of Kasterborous where Gallifrey and her twins suns should have been, but weren't.

This wasn't the ugly, Time-ripped scar that existed back in the other Universe; this emptiness was clean and healthy. Natural. The Way Things Were in a reality where the Time Lords had never existed and the War had never happened. But it was still . . . nothing.

They say that staring into the Abyss is a bad idea, because it will stare back and empty you out, bit by bit, but that option was currently preferable to what lay at the Doctor's back. The interior of the _Mark II_ breathed out memories, from every switch and bolt and square inch. Unlike the TARDIS, this ship was a collaborative project. Her inorganic systems were the product of his and Rose's labor at first, followed in relatively short order by Jed's assistance. He couldn't look at the control panel without seeing Jed's grin, bright as a boy's, when he returned from a foray to the second-hand shops with the perfect new part; or Rose, her hair coming loose from its elastic band and a large grease smudge on one cheekbone, frowning intently over some fiddly bit of assembly. Pete had worked with them on some tricky bits of large-scale installation that needed extra hands and Tony had often "helped" to the best of his ability. Once, disconcertingly, Jackie had even rolled up her shirt cuffs and insisted (over the Doctor's nervous objections) on holding up some wall paneling while Jed bolted it in place.

The _Mark II_ was not his ship, not his alone. But he'd taken her and run anyway. It was a reflex reaction to hurt, a movement ground into his spinal cord over centuries until it became irresistible. In the past, he'd always been able to rationalize it away as being for someone else's good, starting with Susan and continuing right up to the beach at Bad Wolf Bay, when _he_ had stopped running (or so he'd thought) but his other-self had kept on going. This time, though, he couldn't pull that mental sleight-of-hand. The simple fact was he'd run for himself, out of pure selfishness, without thought for others. That knowledge didn't improve his mood, especially since a nagging voice at the bottom of his mind kept calling him a spineless prawn.

_All prawns are spineless, by definition,_ he thought back at himself, but it was a weak retort at best. The part of himself that had come from Donna was unimpressed.

It wasn't that he didn't understand what Rose wanted and why; it was, literally, the most natural thing in the world. Life begot life, endlessly. No species could exist without the desire to perpetuate itself. He felt the pull in his own body – not just from his hot-blooded human half, the one that felt the seasons ticking away at speed and the inevitable breath of mortality at its heels. Even the colder, slower instincts of a Time Lord stirred and whispered at the back of his head, urging him to give in, to take one more chance on the future.

_I can't,_ he thought, closing his eyes and seeing all his lost children, those most recently departed clearest in his mind's eye – Jenny especially. In a way, she was the one who'd finally broken him for good. He'd fought so hard against accepting her, but in the end he hadn't been able to help himself. And then, when he'd decided that maybe he _could_ be a father again, she'd been taken from him, almost as if the act of his beginning to love her had killed her . . .

_Stop it,_ he thought fiercely. Even _he_ could tell that one was over the top. _You didn't kill her. She was killed by a bitter, twisted old man who abandoned Life in favor of embracing death. You could take that as a lesson, if you like._

The last was spoken, again, in a voice that sounded like Donna's. But it wasn't hers, not really; it was his.

He found it convenient to call himself the Doctor, even to think of himself that way in the privacy of his own mind, but the truth was that he was something, and some_one,_ different. He wasn't just a duplicate Time Lord dumped into a mostly-human body with a few bits of Donna soldered onto his psyche; he was a true synthesis, a new being. Even the "he" was questionable, in some ways, despite the fact that his body was perfectly male on the outside. There was no compartmentalizing his different selves, not if he was being honest with himself. _And maybe it's time you started, Spaceman._

_Maybe you're right, Earthgirl._

From his unique perspective, even without being able to see their timelines from across the Void, he could guess with a fair degree of certainty how the futures of his two other-selves had developed. Despite the inevitable loss of her memories, he thought Donna would have the best of it. She had the resilience to keep going, to build a new life, no matter what – and what Donna wanted, she would eventually get. Even with her memories intact and the specter of her lost life with Lee and their children hanging over her (dream or not, the emotions and the memories of that life were real, and the older, wiser part of him that came from the Doctor accepted that), she would have kept going, unafraid to start again. Part of that was a side effect of her youth, and the fact that she hadn't had her heart (_hearts_) broken so many times, but part of that was simply her, being brilliant.

The Doctor, the original Doctor, on the other hand . . . thinking about his future was enough to fuel a month's worth of sleepless nights. There had been times, while Rose and Jed slept in peace, when the hybrid Doctor had taken a blanket from the bed and wrapped up out on the balcony, staring up at the stars. So old, so wise, so powerful, so badly damaged, and so accustomed to running. Not a good combination. The hybrid Doctor was fairly certain there would be no more friends, no traveling companions, not as long as the Time Lord's tenth incarnation continued: another form of running away, rationalized yet again as being for others' benefit. He would be left with nothing but his own dark thoughts, spiraling inward, nobody to pull him out of a black mood or give him hope. The TARDIS would sing to him and help as best she could, but in the end she was a very alien form of life, and no substitute for someone who could speak and laugh and run beside him. The hybrid Doctor was very afraid of where his Time Lord other-self's path would lead. But, in the end, his worries on that subject were useless. The only future he could control was his own.

_And a bang-up job of that I'm doing, too,_ he thought, opening his eyes again and staring out at empty space.

When he'd fled in the _Mark II_, he'd had no idea where he was going; just "away." He'd taken a few random jaunts here and there, doing the same old things, but they hadn't felt right (though it was a good job he'd been around for that Crimson Maw business). He'd eventually had to admit that the greater Universe was no longer where his hearts – _heart_ – lay. It was fine to visit, but the only place he really belonged now was a damp little island nation on a blue planet, third from a single yellow sun, with the adoptive human family he'd found there.

_I have to go back._ Of that, there was no question; the attachment ran too deep. He'd never intended to abandon his partners permanently; he'd just had to get away. _The question is, will they still want me after this?_ He could remember, from Donna's perspective, the TARDIS fleeing her and her well-meant invitation on Christmas Day, and, from his own experience, knew the stomach-dropping sensation of seeing the blue box that had been his home for so long dematerializing forever without so much as a proper farewell. He could vividly imagine the feelings of anger and betrayal he'd left behind. Again. _And what do I, do _we,_ do next? The argument will still be there when I get back._

Until this version of him had crossed the Void for good, he'd never existed in this Universe; his past was merely a story here. There had been no Time Lords, no War. If the Library existed (and it might be worth checking on that, someday), Donna would not go there to find and lose her dream-family. None of it had happened, none of the pain or loss or horror. But none of the good things either: none of the laughter, the first steps and first words; no rolling red hills under a burnt-orange sky; no finding out that "fishing" really meant _fishing_ as far as Lee was concerned; no clear-eyed girl flicking a blonde ponytail as she glanced over her shoulder at him, grinning with the pure joy of being alive.

In place of all those things was what lay before him: nothing. _Nothing comes of nothing,_ a half-forgotten quote whispered in his mind, _and "never" is a long, long time . . . ._

He knew what each of his other-selves would have done in his place, but he was both and neither of them. As always, his own future timeline was opaque to him, though he could feel the press of probability as alternate paths struggled to become reality. _I've been father and mother, creator and destroyer, male and female, Time Lord and human. What will I be next?_ His gaze dropped to his right hand, clasped around his left wrist, supporting his raised knee. It was the hand he'd once discarded (however unwillingly) because it was weak, not a fighting hand. Even now he felt the strain in wrist and ligaments if he overstressed it. He held it up, examining back and palm. _Not a fighting hand – but what kind of hand is it?_

The roil of uncertainty and conflicting impulses he felt was oddly familiar; it took him a moment to recognize it. _This is what it feels like after I've regenerated, when I don't know who I am yet. Never thought I'd feel that way again, since humans don't regenerate. Or do they? Every seven years, they say, that's how long it takes a human body to remake itself, become completely new again. Not a bad estimate. Pretty close, really. By that count, I'm right on schedule . . ._

A slow regeneration, one that had crept up on him since he wasn't used to how humans did things. Not one catastrophic change, just an accumulation of little things over time that could leave a person as completely stunned as a transformation that happened all at once. No wonder humans were so inclined to see life as a journey that could take one strange places, moving through despair and hope, through faith and love, finding a place on the path unwinding . . . .

He had a split second of deja vu before his back-brain popped up with, _Wait, that's "The Lion King."_ His forehead dropped to rest on his forearm and he began to laugh, helplessly, and kept going until he stopped laughing and cried instead.

When he was done, he raised his head, sniffling, and wiped his nose on the back of his not-a-fighting hand. A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision drew his eye; he looked down. There, sitting beside him, teetering on the edge of perdition, was a cup of tea. The wisps of rising steam forming in the chill from the open doorway were what had caught his attention.

For a second he blinked stupidly at the unexpected beverage, but then, shaken out of his closed-in thoughts, he became aware of the _Mark II_'s quiet background song. She was worried, out here so far from home without her usual crew, her lone pilot grim and sad over things she didn't understand. In her own way, she was trying to make things better with a small gesture of care and kindness.

His single heart contracting in a way that had nothing to do with pumping blood, the Doctor thought, _It was tea saved me the last time – tea and family, even though I didn't see it that way, then._

He spared one last glance at the sterile sweep of stars before him, then bounced to his feet, scooping up the cup and saucer next to him in the same movement.

_Time to go home._

 

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unforgivably late, but I hope folks will forgive anyway. Many thanks to Canaan for the final beta, and much encouragement, even though I've been slow to act on it. As usual, I've tweaked it a bit since beta-ing, so any errors remaining are mine alone.

Jed lay on the sofa, hands behind his head, feeling simultaneously jumpy and exhausted, listening to the muffled splash of water as Rose showered in their suite's bathroom. He wasn't at all sleepy, but his eyes were closed because he was tired of staring at the clock and willing it to go faster. The thought of taking a turn in the shower after Rose was tempting; he understood the impulse. It wasn't just an excuse to relax under a spray of warm water, it was a way of restoring order and normality to the tiny bit of the Universe one could personally control.

Although he had to admit, the Universe was doing a pretty good job of staying normal and orderly all on its own. The household in general was ticking along through its daily routine, steady as the sun marking time across the sky, for all that news of the Doctor's spectacular departure had spread like wildfire. An old proverb from fifty-first century Boeshane said the only thing that traveled faster than a ship in hyperspace was gossip, and it was every bit as true here in the twenty-first century.

The Doctor's absence left a gap, but not an unbridgeable one. It was a strange realization; Jed had always oriented himself so completely around his partners, he'd failed to notice there were greater structures in place than just a bond between two people, stretched to accommodate three.

If he'd had any lingering doubts about his place here, they'd been dispelled by the combination of sympathy, embarrassed silence, and/or general tiptoeing-around he and Rose had received. It wasn't just Jackie who considered him an equal partner in the now-wobbly triad -- and it was especially significant coming from people whose culture didn't normally recognize multiple-partner relationships.

_I've been needing a kick in the ass for a while now; I just wish it hadn't had to happen like this . . . _

A familiar knock at the suite's door interrupted Jed's train of thought, informing him that the youngest member of the Tyler family was accounted for and probably on a fact-finding mission.

"Come in," Jed called, swinging his legs around so he was sitting upright. "The door's open."

Tony let himself in and made a beeline for his favorite chair. He was still wearing his uniform.

"Hey, sport," Jed said. "How was school?"

"Okay," Tony said, sitting down. He was silent for a moment, studying Jed with great concentration. "So what did you and the Doctor fight about?"

Jed rubbed the bridge of his nose, but couldn't help smiling behind the cover of his hand. _Well, at least there's_ one_ person around here who isn't afraid to come right out with what's on his mind._ Aloud he said, "It's kind of a grown-up thing."

"That's what Mum said," Tony responded, sounding unimpressed. "What's that mean, anyway?" His voice took on an edge of suspicion, tinged with disgust. "It's not about _sex_, is it?"

Jed managed, just barely, to turn a startled laugh into a cough, grateful his hand was still blocking most of his face from Tony. _Well, in a roundabout way it is,_ he thought, followed immediately by, _Give it another couple of years, kid, and you won't be using that tone of voice. But I'm so not having that conversation today._ "It's more just . . . complicated," he said, regaining control of his expression and dropping his hand to his lap.

"Huh." Tony didn't sound satisfied, but changed subjects anyway. "When's he coming back?"

Jed's couldn't help glancing reflexively at the clock, but some vague superstition kept him from quoting Rose's estimate, as if he might jinx the Doctor's return by mentioning a specific time too often. "Dunno. He needed to take some time out, like when you go to your treehouse. He'll be back when he cools off." _I really, really hope._

Tony nodded in understanding, solemn and worldly as only a pre-adolescent could be. He was growing fast and looking more like Pete every day, ginger-blond and grey-eyed, but with a hint of Jackie's bone structure around the jaw and cheekbones. Set him and Rose side-by-side and their relationship was immediately apparent, despite the wide gap in their ages.

Every now and then, Jed still had flashes of vertigo from being in the presence of someone destined to be a legend for millennia, but as time went on the legend of Anthony Tyler had been eclipsed by the everyday reality of Tony the Terror, as he was widely known. Not that he was a bad kid – just bright and rambunctious, with all of Rose's gift for getting in trouble but less of her knack for wriggling out of it. Somewhere along the way, Tony had adopted Jed as his favorite non-parental adult, and Jed responded by giving the boy advance training in the tricks of a field agent's trade, scaled down to be age-appropriate. While some of that was aimed at molding a future hero, most of it was simply for Tony, in and of himself, because he wanted to learn and Jed found he wanted to teach.

_More wake-up call material,_ Jed thought. _"Uncle Jed" isn't just a courtesy title. I've really worked hard to stay clueless, haven't I?_

"Oh, hello, Tony," Rose said, stepping into the room. She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and was toweling her hair dry. She still looked worn-out, but her body language was more relaxed than it had been for hours. "How was school?"

"Jed already asked me that."

"Well, I'm not Jed. Tell _me_."

A shrug. "It was okay. Mum wants to know if you'll be down to eat with us."

Rose looked at Jed. "It's about that time, isn't it? I'm really not hungry, but it'd probably do us good." She was talking as much to him as to Tony.

Jed was opening his mouth to agree – the last thing either of them needed right now was low blood sugar – when he was interrupted by the sound of a timeship beginning to materialize outside. Rose, having the advantage of already being on her feet, beat Jed to the door, but only just.

\--

They reached the back of the mansion just as the _Mark II_ ran through the last pulse of her materialization cycle and became fully solid in her usual spot. The familiar sound had attracted everyone in the house, but most of them hung back discreetly, letting Rose and Jed step alone through the door and onto the lawn. Tony, who'd been right on their heels, tried to follow; Pete, recently arrived home from Torchwood, caught his son by the collar.

Halfway to the ship, Jed paused, looking back. Jackie had joined Pete and Tony at the door, their postures indicating that they were interested, but were going to leave things to the principals to sort out. Hints of movement at various windows and balconies indicated where other members of the household -- staff and security -- were lurking; Jed couldn't blame them. A person would need impossible self-control _not_ to lurk in a situation like this. But instead of making Jed nervous, the audience was oddly comforting. He and Rose weren't in this alone.

He glanced down at Rose and she took his hand. Her smile was shaky, but reassuring. Together, they turned to face the _Mark II_ as a united front. Jed took a deep breath and felt a marvelous sense of _groundedness_ sweep over him. It was similar to finding one's stance in martial arts and feeling the absolute certainty of proper balance . . . or, even more accurately, like having been treading water to the point of sheer exhaustion and giving up, only to find a solid surface beneath one's feet.

_I've been treading water for years, but not any more,_ Jed thought, and that gave him the strength to face whatever was coming next. Rose tugged his hand and he followed, resuming their approach to the _Mark II_. They'd only taken a few more steps when the timeship's door was flung open and the Doctor all but tumbled out.

He was wearing different clothes, pulled from the stash of spare garments they kept on the ship. Stubble shadowed his cheeks and his exceptionally spiky hair reinforced his rather desperate expression. He spotted Jed and Rose instantly; if anything, his desperation intensified.

He crossed the distance to his partners with long strides, not quite running, and flung his arms around them, burying his face against Jed's chest and Rose's shoulder. Jed had begun to suspect the Doctor's ribs were no longer cracked from the way he'd been moving; the strength of his embrace cinched it, especially when Jed's free arm automatically went up around the Doctor's body and he could feel only bare skin through the other man's shirt, no bandage beneath. The Doctor had been gone longer than it took to just grow stubble.

Jed managed to trade a glance with Rose over the top of the Doctor's head. Any angry or snarky opening he might have considered making had evaporated in the face of the Doctor's greeting.

Rose spoke first. "You're early," she said, taking a half-sarcastic approach. "I wasn't expecting you for another hour and a half."

"I know," the Doctor groaned, his words muffled because he didn't pull away from them to speak. "I'm sorry; I didn't want to be gone _too_ long, but I didn't want to come back too soon, either. I didn't think you'd want to see me again right away." He pulled back, his eyes and face damp. "I hope that was right," he continued, looking worriedly back and forth between them. "I've had a lot of practice at leaving, but not much at coming _back._ I'm not very good at it, yet."

"With any luck, you won't have to get good at it," Jed said. "If you stop running away, it stops being an issue."

The Doctor gave a slightly choked laugh followed by a sniffle, looking like he was torn between grinning and starting to cry in earnest.

Rose had been biting her lip, watching them; abruptly she blurted out, "Look, I'm sorry I snapped like that. I shouldn't have shouted at you, but I was getting so frustrated at the way you wouldn't talk to me at all . . ."

"No," the Doctor said, interrupting her and shaking his head emphatically. "No, no, no. Do _not_ apologize to me, Rose Tyler. You were right, and the first thing I'm going to do is run those compatibility tests." He stopped and swallowed, looking very scared all of a sudden. "If you'll have me back and you're, er, still interested," he added, in a small voice.

Jed snorted and thumped the Doctor's shoulder with his fist -- lightly, since he wasn't sure how healed those ribs were, though the Doctor hadn't shown any sign of pain during their embrace. "Of _course_ we'll take you back. Haven't we as good as said so?"

"And we're still interested," Rose said.

"Both of us," Jed said, just as firmly.

"I'm a lucky man," the Doctor said, sagging with relief and catching them in another, far less desperate hug. "A lot luckier than I deserve."

Rose laughed. "We'll see if you still feel that way after Mum's done with you," she told him. "'Cos the _first_ thing you're gonna do is have dinner with us and after that we're gonna sit down and talk a few things through. Tests can wait."

The Doctor pulled back and blinked at Rose, then, for the first time, looked past his partners to the mansion and the audience arrayed at its doors and windows. He swallowed again, audibly, and Jed began laughing under his breath at his partner's deer-in-the-headlights expression.

"Um. Er, you know," the Doctor said, pulling his partners closer and dropping his tone conspiratorially, "if we made a run for it, I think we could be in the _Mark II_ before any of them make it this far . . ."

"Forget it!" Jed told him. "What'd I just say about running away? That holds true whether you run with us or without us."

"How can we do this if you can't deal with Mum?" Rose said. "Remember, we'll be making her a grandmother. She's involved, too. She's _family._"

The Doctor took a deep breath, visibly struggling with himself. "Okay. Yeah. Sorry. You're right. Dinner with the family it is."

"And don't think _Jackie's_ your only worry," Jed added, pulling away and emphasizing his point with a poke at the Doctor's chest. "I meant what I said about taking you back, but I'm still pretty pissed off at the way you tricked me out the door so you could go haring off for . . . however long you've been gone, your time. And you were _way_ out of line in what you said to Rose." As he spoke his voice developed more of an edge than he'd initially intended, but the hurt was still there under the relief of their reunion.

"Yeah, we spent four hours on pins and needles 'cos of you," Rose said. "You'll be a long time making that up to us."

The Doctor took another deep breath and looked down at his trainers. "Don't I know it," he muttered; his tone was dry, but in a rueful way that indicated he blamed himself. “Sorry. I know I keep saying that, but I _do_ mean it. Especially this time.”

Rose and Jed traded another glance. "You keep this up, we'll have to run more tests," Jed said, softening. "I'm starting to think you're a pod person or something."

"Who are you and what have you done with the Doctor?" Rose agreed with a wry grin.

The Doctor laughed again, and this time it came out clearer and easier.

"Not a pod person, I swear! I just . . . did a lot of thinking while I was away. Spent some time getting in touch with my inner ginger."

"What did she have to say, then, your inner ginger?" Rose asked, giving both her partners a tug in the direction of the house.

"Nothing complimentary," the Doctor said, ruefully, as they began walking towards the rest of their family. "But it was good advice."

Rose, at his side, wrapped her arm around his waist and gave a little squeeze. "Seems like," she agreed.

Jed, moving to the Doctor's other side, draped his arm around the Doctor's narrow shoulders.

"Blimey, your mum looks like a slap waiting to happen," the Doctor told Rose as they got closer.

"We'll protect you," Jed said. "We won't let her rough you up. Much."

"I'll remind her you're gonna be the father of her grandkids," Rose added. "Some of 'em, anyway."

Jed's stomach muscles gave a little twitch at that, an involuntary reaction somewhere between "happy" and "startled." It still sounded strange to be talking, out loud, about the increasingly-real notion of him becoming a parent in his own right, not just an “Uncle Jed” to Rose and the Doctor's kids. With the Doctor back and the emotional tone of things settling down, Jed realized they might just be embarking on the scariest adventure they'd ever had, facing down alien invasion fleets included. At least, that was how it felt to him just then, with the prospect staring him full in the face for the first time.

"Oooh, this is gonna be weird," Jed said out loud. "Responsible adulthood, at last."

"_Again_," the Doctor said. "For me, anyway." He sounded serious, but not unhappy. “Another chance to get it right.”

"A fresh start?" Rose asked, looking up at his face.

The Doctor smiled. "Something like that," he said, before Tony, finally released by his parents, launched himself into a flying tackle aimed mostly at the Doctor.

Pete and Jackie moved aside to let the prodigal and his partners through the door, home and family wrapping around them with the promise of peace and security -- eventually, anyway, once the inevitable shouting was over. When that was finished, the next thing would start, the wheel would turn again, and again after that: eternally the same but always different, full of old joys and new surprises. There would be setbacks and sorrows, as well, but through it all the circle would remain: joined hands, joined hearts and joined hopes, spinning the stuff of life from time and stardust.

It wasn't lilac season, but in the garden the _Mark II_ shook herself and contentedly burst into flower, settling in to wait.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Quadruple-Drabble: Family Traditions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/330860) by [Yamx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamx/pseuds/Yamx)




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